A 28-Year-Old Woman Had a Case of Eye Worms That Had Never Before Been Documented in Humans

Over the course of two weeks, she pulled 14 worms out of her left eye.

CDC

An Oregon woman was on a fishing boat in Alaska when her left eye became irritated, according to CNN. The woman, identified by CNN as Abby Beckley, dealt with the discomfort for several days before deciding that, no matter what, she was going to remove the thing that was bothering her eye.

Beckley poked around, searching for what she thought would be a rogue eyelash. Instead, she pulled out a tiny worm—the first of 14 worms she’d find in her eye over the next two weeks.

This discovery was shocking in and of itself, but Beckley would soon come to learn something even more surprising: The worms in her eye were of a parasitic species called Thelazia gulosa—and they’d never been documented in a human before, according to a case study published earlier this month in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene documenting Beckley's story.

"I was just in shock," Beckley told CNN. "There was no road map—no protocol for this."

This parasite, Thelazia gulosa, is one of many types of eye worms found across the world. However, most of the time, they don't affect humans.

When doctors first came across the worms in Beckley’s eye, they assumed they were Thelazia californiensis—a species of eye worm commonly found in dogs (and occasionally in humans) in western North America, Richard S. Bradbury, Ph.D., the team lead for the Parasite Diagnostics and Biology Laboratory at the CDC, tells SELF. It wasn’t until the scientists further inspected the worms from Beckley’s eye that they realized they might be dealing with a different species.

Bradbury says that only one other kind of Thelazia had previously been documented in humans: the Thelazia callipaeda, an eye worm commonly found in dogs in Europe and Asia. But the worms from Beckley’s eye weren’t Thelazia callipaeda, either. So Bradbury set out to determine what kind of worm they were dealing with.

After combing through old records, Bradbury came across a paper written in German in the 1920s that included photos of Thelazia gulosa, an eye worm found in cows and yaks in parts of Asia, Europe, and North America. This was their worm. Given that Beckley lived on a ranch, surrounded by cows and horses, this discovery made some sense.

Like all forms of Thelazia, these particular worms are transmitted by flies. That's one big reason why they’re so uncommon in humans: A human can swat a fly away, but a cow can’t, making it more susceptible to exposure. Bradbury says that Beckley “might not have been quick enough in swishing the fly away.”

OHSU ophthalmology

Once the worms are fully grown, the infested eye might become inflamed or irritated, and the affected animal (cow or person) might feel like something is moving across their eye.

According to Bradbury, Thelazia gulosa affect cows and humans similarly. The worms begin in the larval stage, and once they reach adulthood, they grow to be about a half-inch in length.

Thelazia gulosa don’t go very deep; they just crawl across the surface of the eye. So even though the worms can live for up to 30 months in an animal’s eye, the symptoms of an infestation are typically more irritating than dire. That said, if the worms crawl across an animal’s cornea, they can cause scarring and, in some cases, vision loss. That's why Bradbury says quick treatment is key. Since Beckley went to a doctor shortly after discovering her eye worms, she was able to get rid of them without any lasting consequences.

"I tried not to go to the darkest place, like, are these worms going to paralyze my face or infect my brain or impact my vision?" Beckley told CNN. ""You can go into 'Poor me, Oh, my God, I'm going to let this destroy me,' or you can just think, 'OK, these are worms, and now I know the life cycle, and I know that they will die, and they are just sharing space,'" she said. "Doesn't mean I wasn't grossed out! It doesn't mean I wasn't angry! But I would try to self-soothe and put it in perspective."

That this worm was just discovered in a human for the first time should not be a cause for concern, Bradbury says.

“This isn’t something I think is going to become more common,” he says. “[Beckley] was just unlucky.” According to him, nothing has changed about the worm to make it any more likely to infect humans, so you don’t need to be afraid or take any steps to prevent this from happening to you, too.

That said, if you have something stubbornly stuck in your eye or any kind of troubling eye irritation, it's best to check in with your doctor. You can rest easy knowing it probably isn't eye worms, but you may have pink eye, allergies, or something else. Your doctor can tell you what's really going on and refer you to a specialist if necessary.